Life Goes on

Much that characterised Hollywood in the 1950s can be described as paradoxical and ambiguous due to anti-communist hysteria and the blacklist.’ How accurate is this statement in relation to two films of the 1950s?

A lot has been made of the suggested subtexts present in High Noon and On the Waterfront, that they reflect the experiences of Carl Foreman (the writer of High Noon) and Elia Kazan with the House Committee on Un-American Activities. Foreman has openly assented to this, and Kazan has admitted that there are parallels. However, while this can give us insight of the personal opinions of these men, I do not think that the significance of these subtexts can be played down enough. My reasons are that they are in no way ‘attached’ to the films-that is, not evident without knowledge other than that of the films themselves; that they add nothing to the films, as a work of art; and that the assumption of the subtexts is very ambiguous. By this last point, I mean that we cannot give authorial intention any more power over our understanding of the film than that of any other interpretation. We would be just as well to say that High Noon is really about the Nazi persecution of the Jews, or even about the Allied attack on the Nazis, because, as I have said, this kind of meaning is not produced by the film but is superimposed over it. The films are interchangeable in this aspect, because they are both about people doing what they believe is right-it just happens that the idea of what is right differed between Foreman and Kazan. A better way of commenting on the socio-political climate of the fifties in Hollywood, as reflected in these films, is to take meaning from the films, rather than receive a meaning from someone who claims authority over them and depreciates the role of the viewer. We must look at what the films really say about America rather than what someone tells us they are meant to say, because these can be quite different things.

The communist scare was at fever pitch in the early 1950s, when HUAC reopened investigations. Opinion was divided in Hollywood. There were those, like Kazan and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom, who believed that the communist threat was real, and that, in Kazan’s words, ‘communists were in a lot of organizations-unseen, unrecognised, unbeknownst to anybody.’ While Kazan has made it clear that he was not happy about testifying at HUAC, he seems firm in his belief that there was a lot of communist indoctrination and brainwashing going on that posed a danger to American society. Opinion amongst others was that HUAC was an angry god who must be sated, and that those who testified were forced into playing up the threat of communism, just to satisfy (and justify) the committee and keep working. Brian Neve has made the point that no matter what Kazan’s feelings were about communism, he might have exposed the threat in ways other than testifying to an organisation that ruined many careers and lives. Arthur Miller said of it that Kazan ‘in his human weakness had been forced to humiliate himself.’

The consequence of blacklisting and the fear generated by HUAC was that there was a shift in Hollywood from the social conscience films of the post-war period, as any criticism of American society was suspected as un-American. I suggest that there is a significant distinction between previous films (like those of the ‘race cycle’) and those of the early fifties. Where the earlier films were critical of American society, its prejudices, and aimed to teach liberal ideas of equality, in some later films the emphasis is shifted from society in general to oppressive (and un-American) organisations-be it an unfair medical committee in People Will Talk, the Ku Klux Klan in Storm Warning, or a corrupt union in On the Waterfront. The distinction is significant because (although, in the last two films, people share the responsibility for allowing wrong to happen) the problem is not America-it is un-American individuals, who must be rooted out of society. As said of the Hoboken docks, in On the Waterfront, it’s ‘like it ain’t even part of America.’ This considered, High Noon could be regarded as a continuation of the concern in On the Waterfront. Hadleyville has been cleaned of the un-American oppressors: Will Kane and the townspeople fought against Frank Miller and the corrupt villains who controlled the town, turning it into a place where it is ‘safe for a decent woman to walk the streets’. But the film is hardly an affirmation of people-power: when justice fails, Miller returns to kill Kane and the people desert him, as it no longer seems their problem. The film concludes, as does On the Waterfront, with a lack of faith in humanity, showing that the will to self-preservation dominates over the other drives. They suggest that humans are like electricity, in that they follow the path of least resistance.